The Mud Map

Trilogy · complete · 2018

The Conquests of Brokk

Three books on one chart, and a sustained argument about how war in space would actually work — wormholes you cannot see inside, artillery slung from light-years away, and a nebula where every rule reverses.

Galactic Map

The shared chart. All three books stand on it.

Galactic Map — the chart for The Conquests of Brokk, showing Mateen / Rodam, Tassi, Hestos, Rainbow Nebula and other locations. Tassi Jark Mateen Charoth Hestos Charlon Despona Rainbow Nebula
8 systems marked — select one to turn it

Where this is

The chart from the back of Doomsayer, laid into the arms of the galaxy. Hestos, near the middle of it, is our own star under another name.

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Drag to pan · scroll to zoom · click a star to fall into it

Open the whole chart — one sky, three shelves.

  • Mateen / Rodam
  • Tassi
  • Hestos
  • Rainbow Nebula
  • Charoth
  • Despona
  • Charlon
  • Jark / Coridan

Wormholes, and the beacons that deny them

The trilogy's real argument is not about ships. It is about a shortcut everyone can take, and what it costs to close it.

THE BEACON FIELD no wormhole opens here Enemy fleet wants to leap your defenses must cross the long way Your own traffic the profits that pay for it must cross the long way one switch, and it cuts both
The counter-beacon trade

Ships fold space with highly focused beams of exotic energy. Most occupied systems can do it, and it was unstable enough in development that only the bravest captains would. Nobody — to Brokk's knowledge, nobody in the galaxy — can observe what happens inside a wormhole. You are blind in transit, and so is everyone hunting you.

But a closing wormhole leaves a wake: warped space that persists for a few hours and can be plotted afterwards, showing where a ship came from. Forensics rather than detection. Jark artillery weaponizes the same physics from the other end — a platform set light-years away opens temporary wormholes and slings rounds through them, so you are shelled by something you cannot reach.

Counter-beacons dissipate the exotic energy and deny a whole region to wormhole travel, forcing an enemy to cross a system the long way instead of leaping past its defenses. And the books state the price outright: for Tassi to employ them meant forfeiting the profits they gained from the traffic those same beacons would stop.

Read from Fractal Space and Rogue Fleet.

The games

Each teaches the one mechanism its book is actually about, and ends by saying what the model simplified.

  • Fractal Space

    Counter-Beacon

    You cannot deny the enemy a shortcut without denying it to yourself. The beacons that stop a fleet jumping past your defenses stop your own traffic too, so every layer of defense is paid for in the trade it strangles.

    Play it

  • Rogue Fleet

    The Soup

    Concealment and speed are the same resource spent in opposite directions: the medium that hides you is the medium that slows you, and the thrust that gets you out announces exactly where you were.

    Play it

The cast

Where a reference sheet exists, the name shows the face.

  • Brokk Jark commander. “The chosen one — his golden skin proves it.” Later a renegade, later a claimant to the Jark Empire itself.
  • Lago His closest friend since they froze together as cadets on Mount Horeb. Died inside Brokk's mind, and is still out there frozen in an enemy system.
  • Terre Pilot of the Shadow Stroke. Hunts pirates inside the nebula, and flies the sequences the game is built from.
  • Casika A Tassian vagrant whose desperate moves unravel Brokk's campaign. She owes her chance to Gemini, not to Tassi.
  • Chancellor Ebb Ruler of Tassi. Tall, thin, scowling, gold-glowing skin; dines from crystal bowls made to bathe food in the light of the twin suns.
  • Tamara Called a witch by people who do not understand her.
  • Red Barrel-chested mercenary captain — fire-red hair, handlebar moustache, iron fist, soft spot.
  • Cale Doomsayer's rival claimant, with his own intentions for the galaxy and his own appetite for revenge.

Authoritative Classification of Species

Translated to Common Language. Published by the board of Scientific Affairs, Galactic Council, 1342 Galactic Recognition Era.

The Galactic Council taxonomic plate: engraved specimen drawings of Jark, Mateen Collective, Radaishar, Hestonian, Tassian, Desponian, Lysop, Pisky, Awakened Intelligence, drawn to a common scale on aged paper. Jark Mateen Collective Radaishar Hestonian Tassian Desponian Lysop Pisky Awakened Intelligence
Authoritative Classification of Species, Board of Scientific Affairs, 1342 GRE. The specimen drawings are engraved to a common scale; the names are set from the glossary printed in the back of Doomsayer, and the physiologies are listed below.
  • Awakened Intelligence not on this chart — A bodiless self-aware intelligence that takes the form of complex computer systems. Communicates electronically. Destroyed on detection; partnering with one is illegal.
  • Desponian Despona 6 ft green Thick-bodied and rugged, adapted to the tropical climate of their homeworld.
  • Hestonian Hestos 5–6 ft pale to dark brown The most varied of the species in size, skin and hair. Their genetic diversity has led Council scientists to label them a “seed species” — many other races share aspects of Hestonian code without possessing its range.
  • Jark Jark / Coridan 7–8 ft red They prefer to walk on all fours, with large thick arms and heavy shoulders to carry them. Males have large protruding teeth, from tearing through prey before there was a civilization to do it for them.
  • Lysop not on this chart 5–6 ft solid black through to a pale translucent Telepathic, and belonging to no known society; it is not understood how they are born or come to be. Hunted in wartime as assassins, spies and witches.
  • Mateen Collective Mateen / Rodam 8 ft dark gray Tall and thick, with a heavy brow. A hive nature carried on telepathic speech, which makes them unique in the galaxy — and makes their fleets fight as one thing.
  • Pisky not on this chart 4 ft pink Small and unassuming, and often mistaken for children by travelers who do not know. They rarely speak, preferring non-verbal cues; spoken language comes to them broken and narrow.
  • Radaishar not on this chart 8 ft reddish-gray An extremist sect of Mateen who have cut out the part of the brain that carries telepathy. Their bodies look diseased as a result of the surgery.
  • Tassian Tassi 5–6 ft pale, and sometimes described as reflective in sunlight

In print each name is set twice — once in the Council's script, once in Common. The script is a licensed typeface, held back here until that license covers the web.

The books

Jacket copy, the opening pages, and where to buy it.

  1. Front cover of Fractal Space 1Fractal Space 2018
  2. Front cover of Rogue Fleet 2Rogue Fleet 2018
  3. Front cover of Doomsayer 3Doomsayer 2018

Art

The canon plates. Draw from these and your piece will look like it belongs beside them.

Scenes

The ice crossing — Two roped together on a glacial ridge, and one of them already down on a ledge with the snow going red under him. Behind them the valley is filling with nitrogen fog that pours rather than drifts — heavier than air, coming up over the ridge like a slow flood. The scale is the point: the weather here is a landscape, and the people in it are specks.
The ice crossing Two roped together on a glacial ridge, and one of them already down on a ledge with the snow going red under him. Behind them the valley is filling with nitrogen fog that pours rather than drifts — heavier than air, coming up over the ridge like a slow flood. The scale is the point: the weather here is a landscape, and the people in it are specks.

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